Trans man speaks about impact of Czechia’s forced sterilisation law on daily life

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Czechia is one of the last countries in Europe to still require transgender people to undergo medical sterilisation in order to legally change their gender – meaning that officially changing your sex is not possible without undergoing surgery to remove your reproductive organs. The Justice Ministry announced over a year ago that they were preparing legislation to scrap this requirement, but with little political will to change the law, it has so far not made it to parliament, despite years of criticism from international human rights organisations. Recently around two dozen Czech NGOs and prominent people signed an open letter to Prime Minister Petr Fiala calling for the government to take action. To help make sense of this often-misunderstood topic, I spoke to Jáchym, a trans man (meaning he was born female) about his experiences of going through the Czech system for gender reassignment. I know Jáchym personally, and indeed had known him as a man for several years without knowing that he was trans. He spoke very candidly and openly about his personal process, starting with when and how he came to the realisation that he wanted to live life as a man.